Sunday, January 19, 2014

Johnnie’s Story

On May 23, 1931, I was born in Virginia to John and Martha Goins Gibson. My grandparents were Andy and Emily Long Gibson and Alex and Merky Collins Goins. I have researched back to my 6th
grandparents.

My parents
owned one car back in the late 30’s. They never had another
one so we did a lot of walking.

I was raised on
Blackwater and Newman’s Ridge. We never owned a tractor; it
was a red mule! I went to school at Elm Springs, Vardy, Sneedville
and Howard’s Quarter School; never got through the 7th
grade.

I washed on a washboard and cooked on a woodstove. I sawed wood to cook with and to keep warm. I washed by a spring and carried water because we never had running water in the house or an inside toilet. I plowed with a mule, I turned ground, and I shocked hay, worked on straw stacks, threshed wheat, cut corn, and pulled fodder corn. I made my toys out of corn stalk. I walked to school two miles there and back and was picked up by a truck for four miles there and back, to go to school. I used a saw to cut wood for wood to sell. My games at night were by a coal oil lamp where we played Hully Gully with parched corn. I took a bath in an old wash tub on Saturday night. We had an old victrola with a Carter Family record. We finally got a Sears Roebuck radio run by a battery that lasted three months. We never had a store bought sled or wagon, but would go to the woods and make our sled and wagon from wood. We lived in the woods, and never learned to climb a tree or swing on a grapevine. I had to pull weeds for the hogs to eat. We had two hogs killed in the fall and two cows gave milk and butter. All we bought from the store was a little coffee, salt and sugar. Taking history back, we grew our own corn and wheat for making our flour for bread, made molasses and maple syrup. To dye our clothes, we used walnuts, rye or goldenrod. We had to spin our wool from sheep. We made our quilts out of worn clothes to keep warm. We lived in a house that when it came a snow we would wake up with snow on our bed. We had chickens to kill and eat, and sold eggs. You made your own food to eat in the winter out of the garden, berries and apples; we dried our beans or we would go hungry. I can say I never went to bed hungry or went naked.

I had good
parents that provided for me. I am thankful for that. We
didn’t have anything fancy. We just had a phone, old rough
stuff to eat, didn’t go to the store for food. We didn’t
have any electricity. We had a spring where we put milk and
butter we made. Three times a day we brought it to the table
and took it back to the spring. The spring was our
refrigeration.

So—I was that Melungeon, raised up poor and hard, still Melungeon made and proud to be one, too!

Johnnie
(Johnnie Clyde Gibson Rhea)

Johnnie
at the John Goins Cemetery on Newman’s Ridge, April 2003.

This article was originally published in the MHS Newsletter Winter 2009

2 comments:

Thanks for sharing this. My mother and Johnnie exchanged letters and phone calls as they were both into genealogy. My grandfather was William Rhea. Sheldon Livesay found a bunch of pictures and there is a picture of the Gibson family. I didn't put it together until today that she was part of this family. This is a treat!

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Melungeons, Footprints from the Past

Stony Creek

The first written record of the word Melungin is recorded in the 1813 minutes of Stony Creek Church. "Then came forward sister Kitchens and complained to the church against Susanna Stallard for saying she harbored them Melungins"

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Mahala Mullin"s Cabin

Originally located on Newman Ridge, since moved to Vardy and restored.

Blackwater Creek, Vardy Valley, Hancock County Tennessee

You must know that within ten miles of this owl's nest, there is a watering-place, known hereabouts as 'black-water Springs.' It is situated in a narrow gorge, scarcely half a mile wide, between Powell's Mountain and the Copper Ridge, and is, as you may suppose, almost inaccessible. A hundred men could defend the pass against even a Xerxian army. Now this gorge and the tops and sides of the adjoining mountains are inhabited by a singular species of the human animal called MELUNGENS. The legend of their history, which they carefully preserve, is this. A great many years ago, these mountains were settled by a society of Portuguese Adventurers, men and women. Littell's Living Age 1848